General Perception of the Incidence of Crime

General Perception of the Incidence of Crime

Neil Schlemmer

Instructor: Amy Bronswick

Theories of Crime Causation

Individual Project Unit 1

January 11, 2015

The general public lacks the overall perception of criminology today, mostly brought on due to family, religion, and day by day social learning that society feeds us. It has been happening for years; the public follows the majority of their peers and the mass media to influence assumptions of a criminal or a crime. The public has a poor understanding of what a criminal or a crime is; the differences between a blue-collar and white collar crime still confuses the majority of the public as well as the severity of the crime or what the criminals intentions really are. Actually, when I was a kid; I seriously thought that the difference was actually the color of the collar of the shirt, not the crime, and that’s how I thought criminals were classified. To find out I was not too far off, a criminal and a crime can come in any color of a collar, white or blue.

The general public will have a better presumption of the way a crime is dealt with and prevented in the criminal justice system once white collar crimes and blue collar crimes are better understood. Understanding the differences between what a criminologist is and what a criminalist is, helps put perspective on the areas of study of criminology in law enforcement and in the public sector. Some of the facts and fictions of crimes presented by the many different media outlets today can have a crime or criminal miss- understood or miss-represented, leaving the public a skewed version of crime (Cornett, J., 2015).

        A general perception at one time was that individuals and organizations who commit white collar offences are well educated, technologically literate, of middle age and well respected in their communities (White Collar Crime, 2015). White collar crimes are normally committed by upper to middle social class in professional practices. These white collared crimes can range from any type of fraud, embezzlement, scams, tax evasion, identity theft, etc. White collar crimes have been defined as non-violent offences committed by people and or groups in positions of power, with the pure purpose of achieving significant gain (White Collar Crime, 2015). These criminals attack bank books and businesses with a pen, and not with a sword. These crimes normally consist of untruthful, unfaithful, thieving business and government professionals that are just plain criminals that commit crimes in a non-violent way. White collar crimes can devastate families, and destroy companies with one quick and quiet swoop wiping out bank accounts and costing businesses billions of dollars (White Collar Crime, 2015).